The parade of cars rolled through Kabul from morning until night, clogging the streets in end-to-end traffic. Crowds of Taliban and their supporters lined the routes, chanting “God is great!” and “Long live the mujahedeen!” One truck dragged an American flag, a red X drawn across its stars and stripes.
Outside the old U.S. embassy, young children — maybe 6 or 7 years old — wearing military fatigues stood on the top of a gray Toyota pickup, clutching small white Taliban flags. A dozen others crammed into the back of the truck, white flags draped over their shoulders. Yet more flags were stapled onto wooden poles, waving in the air.
“Our way is jihad!” a man shouted through a loudspeaker from the passenger seat. The children responded: “Long live jihad!”
With August in Afghanistan come weeks of celebrations marking the anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal — the last American planes peeled off the runway at Kabul’s international airport on Aug. 30, 2021 — and the Taliban’s return to power.
The month has become a time of victors and vanquished, the swell of white flags marking conquered territory, just as past empires planted their own banners. It is also a time of heightened emotions, seeming to amplify the gulf between those who support the Taliban’s conservative rule and those who embraced the liberal ideals of the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
The country remains deeply divided over fundamental questions of what principles it should be governed by, and what ideals it should hold. The only point of consensus seems to be that three years into Taliban rule — with its extreme version of Shariah law — it is here to stay.
As ordinary Afghans have adjusted to their new reality, so too have Taliban fighters. Once scrappy insurgents crafting homemade explosives and plotting ambushes from mountain hide-outs, they now serve as traffic cops, security guards and government bureaucrats. Many can count on one hand the number of times they have fired their weapons in the past three years, each one a celebration of sorts — the Eid holiday or a winning match for Afghanistan’s national cricket team.
Among the Talibs who have come out on the streets to celebrate, there has been a palpable itch for a return to jihad and martyrdom — the only way to live an honorable life, many say, and a guiding belief instilled in them since they were children in Taliban-run madrassas.
“In these three years, we are fixing the roads, helping other people, but we want to continue the jihad,” Panjshiri Shinwari, 27, said on Wednesday when the celebrations commenced. A Taliban fighter who joined the movement during the U.S.-led war, he now works for the government’s intelligence agency, the General Directorate of Intelligence.
He and a group of friends had joined the celebrations at Mahmood Khan Bridge, which stretches over the Kabul River, now a dry channel of weeds and sewage.
“I want to go to Palestine,” Mr. Shinwari continued. “We are all ready to continue our jihad in Palestine!”
“No, it’s Pakistan’s turn,” another young Talib, Ashiqullah Naziri, 19, piped in.
“Our first enemy is Pakistan. They destroyed our country,” he added, referring to the support that Pakistani authorities gave to American troops in Afghanistan. “We can’t just leave them alone after that!”
As they spoke, a swell of young Talibs converged around them. Most wore cargo pants, American-made combat boots and black long-sleeve T-shirts with a faded logo of what looked like an American commando stamped on its shoulder. The Talibs’ embrace of the style of American soldiers is just one of the many ways the country has been turned on its head since the takeover.
“For jihad!” one of them yelled. The crowd cheered.
The anniversary celebrations span the country. In Kandahar, the Taliban’s southern heartland, a convoy of armored cars from the emir’s special protection force paraded through the city on Wednesday. In Helmand Province, another stronghold, a procession of motorcycles carrying the Taliban’s flag rode through the capital. And at Bagram Air Base, once America’s largest military post in Afghanistan, a procession of repurposed American tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters took over the runway.
In Kabul, the celebratory convoy of cars — a mix of government-owned and private vehicles — crawled around the city’s main squares. Many had large flags hanging out of all four windows, a version of the Shahadah, or the Muslim profession of faith, embossed on the white fabric. As the summer breeze picked up, the flags grew taut and the Arabic words decipherable.
At the Mahmood Khan roundabout, a Taliban policeman sat in the passenger seat of his forest green Ford Ranger, singing a tarana — a religious chant with a melody but no musical accompaniment — into a loudspeaker. A group had surrounded his vehicle, small flags tucked into the folds of their black turbans.
“The candle of success and freedom came back to our country! The sun of freedom came again to our sky!” the man sang. “Congratulations to all Afghans, independence has come again!” The Talibs in the crowd held their cellphones in the air, taking videos during the song.
But for other Afghans in the city, its lyrics rang hollow.
“It is a black day for Afghans,” said Esmatullah, 25, a doctor who is among Afghanistan’s Hazara ethnic minority, which was persecuted by the Pashtun-dominated Taliban during their first time running the country, in the 1990s. “I felt like a migrant today, like I was not in my country,” he added.
Esmatullah, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of retribution for speaking against the government, is trying to avoid the celebrations. He said they served as a reminder not of Afghanistan earning its freedom, but of being conquered by Pashtuns.
Still, for many ordinary Afghans who suffered at the hands of foreign and Afghan republic soldiers, the anniversary is not so much a celebration of the current government as it is of the end of two decades of war.
“War is gone, death is gone,” said Barakatullah Azizi, 23.
Mr. Azizi’s three brothers all joined the Taliban during the war, he said, while he worked as a shopkeeper in Kabul to earn money for his family. One of his brothers, Mansour Azizi, was killed nine years ago in an ambush by Afghan republic soldiers.
His brother’s death haunted him for months, he said. Every day, when he saw republic soldiers in the capital, he wondered which of them had killed his brother, and from whom he should seek revenge.
Now, he says, he walks through the city streets at ease.
“There is peace,” he said. “That’s what we are celebrating.”
Safiullah Padshah contributed reporting.
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